So from my post title, you might have guessed that my second trip to the smokies in 2013 was to Cataloochie. Cataloochie is definitely one of my favorite smokies destinations.
I was really excited about getting back to the park after the day I had on Sam's on Saturday. When I got there, the air was cooler than the day before, but the water felt warmer.

When I reached Cataloochie, it was way more empty than I was expecting, but I wasn't about to complain about that.

Some the herd were standing by the road

Or just walking out in front of cars

So when I finally got to the Pretty Hollow Trail, it was about 1:45pm. I hiked in past the horse camp and fished a couple of deep holes. I managed to see a couple of rainbows smash my dry and a couple of soft takes on the dropper, but no fish to hand.

A little ways up, I was standing in the edge of the stream, casting out to a deep hole and I noticed something fluttering above the water. At first I thought it was a large moth or bird, but quickly realized it was a bat! It was scooping up insects above the water and occasionally drinking from the stream. Every so often he fly up into the trees hunting and then come back. After he circled my legs twice, I headed up stream, wanting nothing to do with a wayward daytime hunting bat. A little ways up I hooked into my first fish. He was a good sized one, about 7-8", and when I got him to shore and on to the bank, he flipped, and threw my fly and splashed back into the water. I did get a good enough look at him to see that he was a brown. I had got him on the bank, but didn't actually touch him so thus the 'slam with a *'.

A few minutes later I picked up a small rainbow, about 5". I didn't think this would be only bow of the day, or else I would have taken his picture. When I caught this brookie, I switched my dropper back to the pink weenie

From that point on the fishing improved, but for some reason I feel the fish in Cataloochie are more adept at throwing a fly than in other parts of the park. It's probably just me, but everytime I fish in this area, I feel like I lose more fish than I do in other parts of the park.

So about 4:45 I decided it was time to head back. I was way below the Palmer creek trail and so I broke down my 8 piece rod, which fit nicely in my creel and started up the steep slope. This rod made it well worth it. Having both hands free when climbing up such a steep leaf covered slope made it possible to get up when I dont think I would have if I had been carrying a rod.

Sunday was kinda of a reverse of Saturday in some days. I had more than 30 fish on, and only brought about 10 to hand. Like I said, those Cataloochie fish are slippery!

On my hike back down the pretty hollow trail, I encountered more bats! These were hunting on the trail itself and flying right towards my face. I would wave my hat at them and they would turn and fly the other way before coming right back. A couple of times, they didn't make the turn until they were less than a foot from my face!